Through billions of years of evolution, nature has optimized the programmed assembly of the nano- and micro-scale structures of biological materials. Nanoparticle assembly provides an avenue for mimick- ing these multiscale functional structures. Bio-inspired surfaces with special wettability have attracted much attention for both fundamental research and practical applications. In this review, we focus on recent progress in nanoparticle assembly-induced special wettability, including superhydrophilic surfaces, superhydrophobic surfaces, superamphiphobic surfaces, stimuli-responsive surfaces, and self- healing surfaces. A brief summary and an outlook of the future of this research field are also provided.
As a novel class of metallic materials, bulk metallic glasses(BMGs) have attracted a great deal of attention owing to their technological promise for practical engineering applications. In nature, biological materials exhibit inherent multifunctional integration, which provides some inspiration for scientists and engineers to construct multifunctional artificial materials. In this contribution, inspired by superhydrophobic self-cleaning lotus leaves, multifunctional bulk metallic glasses(BMG) materials have been fabricated through the thermoplastic forming-based process followed by the SiO_2/soot deposition. To mimic the microscale papillae of the lotus leaf, the BMG micropillar with a hemispherical top was first fabricated using micro-patterned silicon templates based on thermoplastic forming. The deposited randomly distributed SiO_2/soot nanostructures covered on BMG micropillars are similar to the branch-like nanostructures on papillae of the lotus leaf. Micro-nanoscale hierarchical structures endow BMG replica with superhydrophobicity, a low adhesion towards water, and self-cleaning, similar to the natural lotus leaf. Furthermore, on the basis of the observation of the morphology of BMG replica in the Si mould, the formation mechanism of BMG replica was proposed in this work. The BMG materials with multifunction integration would extend their practical engineering applications and we expect this method could be widely adopted for the fabrication of other multifunctional BMG surfaces.
